Welcome To Our City

The City of Maricopa, also known as the “Gateway to the Sea”, is a quiet little town that rests against the foothills that rim the lower San Joaquin Valley and is nestled in the junction between State Route Highways 166 & 33.

The vital vein that became Maricopa’s source of life flowed from an oil well that was unleashed from the Midway-Sunset Oil Field, a field that is approximately 20 miles long, from the east of Maricopa to the south of neighboring city McKittrick.

In the 1900's, a whirlwind of fortune had uncapped a historical oil well known as the “Lakeview Gusher”, who at its peak produced an estimated 90,000 barrels of oil a day for 544 days, the longest-lasting and most productive oil gusher in U.S. history.

Though the Lakeview Gusher has quieted its flow, the Midway-Sunset Oil Field remains the largest oil field in California and the third largest in the United States.

The town of Maricopa has worked hard to preserve the richness of its history and harder still at broadening the opportunities of unleashing yet another era of uncapped possibilities.